Forster all rolled up

I used an old Nutella jar.  Is there anything Nutella can't do?

A few weeks ago the awesome ladies at the cooking blog Our Best Bites did a post on homemade fruit roll ups.  I know what you're thinking - Reva follows a cooking blog??  Even though I hate cooking, these ladies do a great job of making it dumbed down enough that I can understand them.  That's kind of amazing.  So when I saw this post, I remembered that we had a pile of about-to-turn strawberries in the fridge that would be perfect for this.  And if I messed it up, they were destined for the garbage disposal any way.

And people, it worked!  To the point that it actually scares me - Forster can eat a roll in about 3 seconds and act like a drug addict begging for more.  Thankfully I know exactly went into them so it's a pretty guilt-free treat.  I don't sweeten them at all so they are just straight fruit.  I was telling a friend at church about how proud I was (even though it's only 2 steps, that's still a huge deal for me!) and she told me her mom used to make these out of applesauce.  Applesauce??  Forster is a apple addict!  So I made another batch with a banana and peach that were about to turn, and added enough applesauce to give it the right consistency.  Voila!

Last week my mom sent me a box of plums from her backyard in Colorado.  They were crazy delicious, but Forster wouldn't eat them, and Solei wasn't about to help me eat the entire box.  But I knew how to get them into their adorable bodies!  I pureed them up and Forster has been gobbling them up like a fiend.  I even let him have one for dinner.  Why not?

The reason I love this is because whenever I buy fruit, the kids will eat the first bits but there are always something left that goes bad because they're bored with it.  Problem solved!

Let's be honest, I mostly wrote up this post so I could spam it with pictures of Forster.  He's so much dang fun, I couldn't help myself.  When he's happy, it's crazy infectious.

So to spread just a but more of that joy, here are some videos I took of him yesterday (since I realized the last videos I'd posted that weren't for atreblemaker were 6 months ago!) .  The first is one of him reading one of his favorite books to you:



And this one is one of him watching a video of him and Solei from a year and a half ago.  It never fails to make us smile, and it never fails to put him into a giggling fit.  If you listen closely, you can hear him whining up a storm when I turn on the camera, but 2 seconds later when I turn the camera on him and he's watching the video, he's nothing but giggles.

Forster turned 2!

I just realized I'd forgotten to post anything about Forster's 2nd birthday!  He didn't know what was going on, but he seriously loves attention so he was in birthday heaven.

To start off, I decorated the living room to surprise him.  Solei even helped me blow up the balloons!

It's amazing how exciting a bunch of balloons can be.

Solei was as always a fantastic help.  Forster has begun to say her name and when he's lonely or excited, he calls out for her to join him.  It's fantastic!

Of course there was cake.

Then, that week for my Young Women's activity, Jared was at a stake priesthood meeting, so the girls came over and threw a party for him.  We put a mattress on the floor in the toy room, we cut the balloons down and covered the mattress and floor with them.  It was wonderful mayhem!

My counselor Jenna brought over her kids too, and Forster spent the rest of the night jumping off the couch onto them.  They were good sports about it :)

He is such an affectionate, lively little boy and we are so blessed to call him ours!

The end!

First day of school...yay?

We figure we should be good at this- 2 years ago she went to a daycare/preschool 2 days a  week.  Last year she went to a preschool 3 days a week.  So you'd think just adding one day to a grand total of 4 days a week for for 4 year old kindergarten wouldn't phase me.

Wrong.  I bawled my face off of course.  Who wouldn't miss her????

Forster was feeling a little down too.

A little tickling cleared that right up.